Encouraging the Dreams of Children

We could say that it is almost a universal experience. A child expresses some sentiment, some idea about what he or she would like to do, something that soars beyond the mundane daily existence, something that makes things better, increases the beauty and harmony of life, cherishes life, and then the elders, parents, relatives, teachers, make it clear to the child that their dreams are not ‘practical’ and they should instead focus on their studies and preparing for a career or job that will provide them a stable livelihood in their adult lives. Rare are those elders who can nourish and encourage the dreams of these children, and who take steps to help them actually work toward achieving them.

An example that seems to frequently come up is the natural and spontaneous love for animals that children exhibit and their aversion to eating meat when they find out that meat is actually a slaughtered animal. Parents in meat-eating societies often force the children to eat meat despite the child’s aversion, and many is the time that a family dog benefited from the child’s resistance as the meat seemingly disappeared down to the floor!

Many children seem to have an innate sense of beauty, harmony, harmlessness, justice, truth, good will and basic harmony.

We could ask how it is that children have such dreams, or aspirations. Where do they come from if they are not part of their daily, external lives or education? It is clear, when one looks closely, that they bring them from another domain of being. Those who understand these things in depth speak of the development of the psychic being over many lifetimes. The maturity of the understanding, without the intellectual words to express it, comes with them into the new life they have taken on. It is also in such a manner that we can understand how a young Mozart, 5 years old, can be writing music and at age 6 performing before royal courts in Europe, speaking to a maturity and power of expression far beyond that of toddlers generally.

The Mother notes: “When one is very young and as I say ‘well-born’, that is, born with a conscious psychic being within, there is always, in the dreams of the child, a kind of aspiration, which for its child’s consciousness is a sort of ambition, for something which would be beauty without ugliness, justice without injustice, goodness without limits, and a conscious, constant success, a perpetual miracle. One dreams of miracles when one is young, one wants all wickedness to disappear, everything to be always luminous, beautiful, happy, one likes stories which end happily. This is what one should rely on. When the body feels its miseries, its limitations, one must establish this dream in it — of a strength which would have no limit, a beauty which would have no ugliness, and of marvellous capacities: one dreams of being able to rise into the air, of being wherever it is necessary to be, of setting things right when they go wrong, of healing the sick; indeed, one has all sorts of dreams when one is very young…. Usually parents or teachers pass their time throwing cold water on it, telling you, ‘Oh! it’s a dream, it is not a reality.’ They should do the very opposite! Children should be taught, ‘Yes, this is what you must try to realise and not only is it possible, but it is certain if you come in contact with the part in you which is capable of doing this thing. This is what should guide your life, organise it, make you develop in the direction of the true reality which the ordinary world calls illusion.”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Powers Within, Chapter XVI Body, pp. 124-125